Farmer seeks $2.5 million in damages from city over landfill pollution

By Brian Cole

Published on March 17, 2006

The two-year struggle between Schrock and the city now involves a lawsuit which requests $2.5 million in compensation for damages to his land caused by an adjacent abandoned landfill.

Schrock's 92-acre farm sits next to the landfill that was used from 1960 until 1993. The city has known since 2003 that the landfill causes groundwater contamination. Extra water lines have been extended to homes that were using wells for drinking water in the area.

Bedford has installed monitoring wells on Schrock's land to track the movement of contaminated water. Meanwhile, the city has been working with the Department of Environmental Quality to create a plan of action that would hopefully lessen contamination. In August, the city put forth a plan that would use various methods to clean up certain areas of the land, which would allow chemicals to dissolve naturally over the course of ten years.

Schrock did not think that was an aggressive enough action and he filed suit to recover damages for past and future lost revenue, lost rental value and reduced property values.

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